


saltwater spring, olive tree

by silkensong



Category: Mother 3
Genre: Character Study, Dragons, Friendship, Gen, Light Angst, this time i present... [shuffles papers] more dragon lucas!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:35:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26617552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silkensong/pseuds/silkensong
Summary: Lucas is very, very tired. It has been a long time.
Relationships: Claus & Lucas (Mother 3)
Kudos: 10





	saltwater spring, olive tree

Lucas is the dragon.

He shapes the world first. Takes a ball of clay and hardened earth, dry heat turning the clay to cracked brick; his nails cut thin channels open, the curve of his fingers a scoop to dig up a gorge. Where he cries the earth fills with water, the endless downpour a vicious line across the bowl of the ocean. The excess that catches on his fingers forms the rivers, the lakes, the endless blue beneath.

Lucas is the dragon. The dragon shapes the world, makes it, turns the ridges of its spines into mountains and the heart that beats within its chest to the core of the earth. Lucas is the dragon, and he shapes the clay mold to form the mountains, pulling the spires of each vertebrae into the shape of the mountain, the cliff that falls into the endless sea.

Lucas is the dragon. He pulls the needle free─with it comes a burst of energy, light and sound and feeling too much to comprehend. Ice drips from the too-large fangs in his mouth, teeth too sharp, the ice in place of blood, his eyes glassy with the cold. The dragon is not human, shines with the glitter of winter even as spring draws close, with the needle pulled free Lucas is not contained within his body. Everything is too much for his tiny little human heart so it all comes spilling free, the outpouring a rush of saltwater.

The saltwater spring. The olive. Two gods fight over which is right; if Lucas is the one who made the world, then Claus is his counterpart, the one who would always end it. Their souls are mirror matched, reflections in the coin of fate: where one lives, one dies, where one creates, one destroys. Parallels. Opposite methods of thoughts. Opposite beings.

Lucas peels the death that has permeated his being from his lungs, and gives new life to the new world. Animals untainted by Porky’s childish desires, a Sunshine Forest stood tall and unburnt, the dark curve of greenery atop Drago Mountain. Cold snow, for children to play games in, to laugh and cry and live. The Nowhere Islands, untouched by human hands.

He thinks of people next. Lucas imagines Leder in the bell tower, ringing out the drone of the bell as always, quiet as he stares out at Tazmily. It had been a lonely village, steeped in nostalgia for a world that both was and was not. Leder speaks of the lost world, destroyed in some great calamity. Lucas pieces Tazmily together as Leder speaks of the old world’s ruin─it is the same as before, a coin flip on the twist of fate, Lucas and Claus the reflections of each other in life and death, Tazmily existing in both a state of wholeness and destruction.

Hinawa and Alec are in the mountain cottage. She is cooking an omelette in the way she always does. The way she always did. Somehow the smell of it lingers in the air, familiar as the ache in his chest. Salt and black pepper, cubes of tomato and onion, the smell rising higher as it fries. Lucas wonders when he will next taste the omelette, feels that nostalgia rise and build in his throat. It tastes of home. It tastes of grief.

Gymnopédie no. 1 is a simple piece of music. It rises and falls in gentle slopes, does not sing but does not scream, is the low hum of Leder as he speaks of the origins of Tazmily. How he did not speak it, Lucas does not know; if that choice were in his hands, he would have told the people long ago. Greed and pride have consumed his friends once before. Perhaps Lucas is biased. Perhaps he does not want to see that happen again.

In a way, Leder is the gymnopédie. Lucas will hear the familiar notes of its melody, will think I have watched this world live and die, and he will sit and listen to the words beneath it all. Nobody else will hear them or remember them─nobody else will remember Leder, or Flint, or the save frogs who sat and listened as Lucas rambled on about picking flowers and fighting the Jealous Bass.

Lucas is the dragon. Lucas is very, very tired.

When he sleeps, his claws become the roots of the oldest trees. His breaths even out, shifting into the steady pulse of the wind; he falls into a gentle, steady sleep, undisturbed by nightmare. The first animal that walks over his body is a dog, he can tell. Boney, he thinks, old friend, old friend, how long has it been?

When Lucas sleeps, new life grows around him. He curls into himself in the winter, shrinks from the cold that he created. Ice is a second skin as the leaves fall from the trees, the roots digging deeper, the branches beginning to creak with age. The snow melts, a river running over his spine, the sand at his mouth turning to glass when he breathes gentle flame.

It begins to rain.

Lucas reaches for Claus. He knows that his brother has to be there, because his heart is thudding soft and slow, and the tension in the line of his shoulders is gone. All the stress bleeds out of him, leaves his stomach with an overflowing well of grief, everything slowly draining from him.

“Lucas,” Claus murmurs. His voice is watery and distant, filtered through a paper-thin film. He blinks, slow and sluggish, uncomprehending. “You can always come home. We will still be here.”

Lucas blinks again. “...Alright.” The next words are even further away, so much so that Lucas cannot tell what they are; for a second, a quiet sadness fills him, and then Lucas breathes out and the feelings leave him alone, carried away by the waves. He still misses Claus─he always will, he thinks, in the way that their lives are so entwined.

Faint melody. Distant song. Lucas drums his fingers on his knee, taps his foot quickly. Thinks that home will always be there, no matter how much time has passed. Lucas breathes in, slowly, slowly, tastes the life in the air around him, sees everything rebuilt and regrown.

He takes Claus’ hand, and refuses to let go.

**Author's Note:**

> mmm mother 3... i know i can return to you when i am sad...


End file.
